We have essentially no clear evidence either way. Just as it's hard to infer a cause from homicide rate comparisons between countries, you can't really infer a cause from homicide rate comparisons between schools in different states: there are many variables unaccounted for. Add in statistical insignificance because school shootings are so rare and the evidence is garbage.

That said, it seems silly that an insurer would refuse to insure schools as a result of people being allowed to carry guns. Shootings are extremely rare across the country, and even our limited sample size in Utah is enough to tell us that pandemonium doesn't result from Utah's policy. If there's enough uncertainty to affect the bottom line, the reasonable thing is to bump up rates a bit, not refuse to insure.

uld refuse to insure schools as a result of people being allowed to carry guns. Shootings are extremely rare across the country, and even our limited sample size in Utah is enough to tell us that pandemonium doesn't result from Utah's policy. If there's enough uncertainty to affect the bottom line, the reasonable thing is to bump up rates a bit, not refuse to insure.

How do you price it? All the companies admitted that while they have identified a risk, they haven't been able to price it yet and therefore aren't going to insure against it. What's the 'bullshit' part of this? Insurance companies aren't typically known for turning away captive markets like this for bullshit; this is a gravy train for them absent a real perception of risk that's not being accounted for. The incentives are such that it doesn't make sense for them to throw away huge business over bullshit. So what, precisely, is the bullshit that fits this scenario?

Shootings roughly follow a Poisson distribution. We have a Poisson distribution with unknown parameter λ. We've observed x shootings in y amount of time. By Bayes, that imposes a probability distribution on λ, which is in the Gamma family. Given an allowed risk factor r indicating the probability that the company loses money, we assume λ is in the range [0, λMax] chosen to contain 1-r probability according to the distribution on λ. We then charge the payout amount at λMax plus profit margin / overhead.

I don't know what Kansas' tort against the government law looks like, but if punitive damages are available, that's a big unknown. I bet the insurance companies would be willing to offer insurance with a fairly low cap per incident (say $250,000).

Public entities will pay outrageous amounts even to lower deductibles, let alone for conservative limits. We have a client (one of the state governments) that paid $1.2MM to buy down an aggregate $2MM deductible for flood down to $100,000 per occurrence. They do not care that they can just put the money in an account and self insure.

Insurers don't care about mass death; they care about insurable losses. That means that while a school insurer isn't liable for a criminal attack like happened at Newtown, an insurer could be liable if one of their insureds was sued for any number of arms-related events. Like the old law mandating 5-mph bumpers in order to reduce insurace payouts, insurance coverage and law is only about money.

Don't confuse insurance coverage with ethics. It's ethical to assist those in medical distress, for example, even if doing so creates liability for an insurer.

There are a few exceptions with things specifically designed for such use like the FN-P90, but those are rare.

We're owners of one here.

Dang, those things kick ass. How does one legally own one?

Get a Class III, Class II, or Class I SOT, be engaged in the business of selling Title II arms, register with ITAR and pay the fees, and in the case of the former two SOT classes, and obtain an explicit written request from an agency a request to demo that specific arm. BATFE will generally approve a request to transfer not more than two post-1986 Dealer Sample machineguns of the specified type. That certainly seems unreasonable in order to obtain a PDW usable by the small-statured, which they could only only possess for self-defense if they were employees of the SOT. We're assured by gun-control advocates that rights aren't being infringed with arbitrary government permission slips, but that's clearly not the case.

.劉煒 and company have a PS90 though, which is a Title I variant that lacks automatic fire and the short barrel, and necessitates dramatically less pointless paperwork.

Washington St doesn't allow short barrel rifles or shotguns, nor Title II machine guns, as a matter of state law. There is efforts underway to repeal the SBR part, like the effort in 2011 to repeal the suppressor ban, but in today's political climate, the MG ban is effectively set in stone.

Empty retail shelves, long backorders, and exaggerated price increases on online auction sites -- all fueled by rumors and conjecture -- have amplified concerns about the availability of ammunition and firearms-related items.

Making target dummies that are identifiable as a real-world person, living or dead, has always been one of the lower points of the gun rights side of the issue. This is almost as dumb as the Trayvon Martin silhouette targets.

Making target dummies that are identifiable as a real-world person, living or dead, has always been one of the lower points of the gun rights side of the issue. This is almost as dumb as the Trayvon Martin silhouette targets.

And including an actual picture of a mass shooting victim in the ad to sell the target. That guy who tweeted it is in the ad and was shot 4 times during the Virginia Tech massacre.

Making target dummies that are identifiable as a real-world person, living or dead, has always been one of the lower points of the gun rights side of the issue. This is almost as dumb as the Trayvon Martin silhouette targets.

To be fair, the target isn't of any person in particular. The person in question is in the blurry photo in the background of the advertisement. They probably didn't give any thought to their selection of the background photo.

Making target dummies that are identifiable as a real-world person, living or dead, has always been one of the lower points of the gun rights side of the issue. This is almost as dumb as the Trayvon Martin silhouette targets.

To be fair, the target isn't of any person in particular. The person in question is in the blurry photo in the background of the advertisement. They probably didn't give any thought to their selection of the background photo.

The dummy looks more like Reagan to me, anyways.

Ah, I misunderstood. I thought it was supposed to look like some specific gun control lobbyist.

Featuring pictures of people shot in massacres, even if they lived, is despicable in an ad for a shooting target. And the "blurry" picture is so clear you can tell it is him by looking at his twitter avatar. Blurry my ass. Maybe they shouldn't put real people in their ads for shooting targets.

I've seen the zombie ones in a "hunting" store that we visited once, when we were looking for an inflatable mattress for camping. I'm not sure I'd want to spend that kind of cash for the zombie target, instead of a thick pack of paper targets...

Maybe when they update their ex-wife/gf model (yes it exists) the can advertise it with pictures of women who were victims of domestic abuse. Seems like milfox is okay as long as the likenesses in the ad are generic white women.

The Governor of Illinois just had his veto overridden, and thus, Illinois joins the rest of America in allowing it's citizens to carry concealed with a permit. Illinois was the last state to completely ban the practice.

What is amazing to me is it seems that the permit they just got is better than what California residents get, at least as far as availability. California's permit allows you to carry just about anywhere, if you can get one. If you live in most counties, especially in the most populous areas of LA, San Fran, San Diego, and Sacramento, forget it, unless you are rich, or a big campaign contributor.

Evidently a cop in Nevada sold a gun (private sale) to a prohibited person. She only asked him if he had committed any crimes. He hadn't and said so. He was, however, institutionalized for being a danger to himself/others. Oops. UBCs aren't necessary, the cop just needed more training in the sales of weapons!

Evidently a cop in Nevada sold a gun (private sale) to a prohibited person. She only asked him if he had committed any crimes. He hadn't and said so. He was, however, institutionalized for being a danger to himself/others. Oops. UBCs aren't necessary, the cop just needed more training in the sales of weapons!

Every month, the state Department of Justice sends letters to law enforcement agencies with information on the people who applied for a background check to buy a gun but were denied because of their criminal records. Because the act alone is another crime, the state’s expectation is that some of the illegal applicants would be tracked down and arrested again. But that doesn’t seem to happen in most of California, as agencies tend to be overloaded with existing work. The California Department of Justice, however, does have agents actively collecting weapons from people who are convicted of crimes or institutionalized for mental illness if those people do not voluntarily turn over their guns.

“Everybody gets the notices,” explained District Attorney Joyce Dudley recently, “but nobody was doing anything.” So nearly two years ago, she started finding these people, and now her department is actively arresting and prosecuting them as part of their regular jobs. “To my knowledge, no one around the state is doing this,” said Dudley. “I want people to know we’re watching.”

The timing couldn’t have been better: Due to growing concern over stronger gun laws nationwide, there’s been a spike in gun buying even in Santa Barbara County, and the number of folks trying to do so illegally has also jumped. The letter used to list about four or five people a month, but that number is closer to 15 or 20 today. “It’s just a flood,” said investigator David Saunders.

Once found, some claim ignorance of their banned status, others admit that they thought no one was paying attention, and some didn’t think past crimes would cross state lines. But many appear to be just plain guilty of trying to sneak through the system, and Dudley’s prosecutors have already put some of those back in prison for years. She explained, “If we can prevent someone from getting a gun who shouldn’t have one, that’s the easiest thing we can do.”